Interviews
Matt Hales from Aqualung talks to Britsound
Interview with Matt Hales, April 16, 2007.
Rob Quicke: How’s the U.S. tour going so far?
Matt Hales: So far so good. I mean, you know, we’re on date two of thirty or so. So, you know, we’ve got the usual beginning-of-the-tour-kind-of-complications. But we had a nice show in Pittsburg last night, we’re in DC today. And yeah, it’s going to be fun I think!
RQ: Now what’s it like when you play in American, it’s obviously it’s a much larger country. Do you go into a different tour mode, when you are in America because it’s so large?
MH: I just really think of it as a continent, I suppose. Because there are such differences between different parts of the states, it just feels more like you are traveling in different countries. And when you think of it that way, it makes the scale of it make a bit more sense. I mean in the end touring anywhere in the world is quite a lot of sitting in a funny bunk, sitting in a weird bus with awful upholstery and being ferried around and told what to do. And it’s like there is a special ‘tour world’ which is just parallel to the real one.
RQ: I did an interview last year with Gomez who said that they find America is interesting because they can tour almost endlessly.
MH: Yes.
RQ: If they wanted to, there is that option to keep going. Which is a good thing, but also it’s exhausting. Do you find that?
MH: It is exhausting. I mean touring is a very odd way of life where ever you are. And by the time that you’ve kind of gone around it’s time for you to start again on the other coast or whatever. You have to kind of learn to say to no; otherwise it could just kind of eat you up completely, I think, and you’d be nothing but a pair of tattered socks!
RQ: [laughing]
MH: So yeah, I mean, I have had to get good at saying “you know, I’d like to stop touring American for a little while please.”
RQ: What do you think of America? Are you aware of the news today, the big news today with the Virginia Tech shooting? Have you heard of that?
MH: No I haven’t. I mean I’m in the tour bubble, I haven’t experienced any news today.
RQ: Thirty two students were shot dead today at a college, Virginia Tech University.
MH: Oh my God.
RQ: Which is bigger than Columbine. It’s a different country where guns are part of the whole culture. What are your thoughts about America?
MH: Yeah, after that shocking news. I mean it seems to be a country full of contradictions. I mean, I guess most countries are, but it seems really, really there is a gulf between two poles. On the one hand, there are forward thinking fantastic talented and wonderful inspiring characters whether it’s musicians or film makers or politicians or writers or playwrights or whatever. And then this other kind of sort of like, lost people. And then I guess if you give the lost people machine guns then you just, you get these things. I don’t know. It seems like to be like a society kind of screaming for help. I mean these things seem to happen in this country with awful regularity. You know, so it’s not just one awful crazy individual, it’s somehow a function of something that is amiss with this place on a very basic level; about communities and families and people’s hopes I guess. It’s very troubling, it’s a very strange thing to hear about this as someone who is here working and you know, I mean what I’m doing is so superficial. You know; kind of coming and playing ‘nice’ music to people who pay to come and have a great evening. And it’s sort of, it’s a wonderful thing, but it’s sort of a fundamentally facile thing in light of the developments that you just told me.
RQ: But there is a certain depth to music isn’t there? You’ve got to be, what you write about in many ways you deal with real human emotions for example.
MH: Yeah.
RQ: For example the single Pressure Suit. That is not an obvious American top forty commercial single is it?
MH: No. Certainly not. But I mean like I think we’ve been like that from the word go, I was always interested in sort of trying, I suppose with my writing, to articulate a kind of grown up pop music or grown up songs, grown up issues. Real things about being a real person in the real world, but kind of through this medium of poetry and music.
RQ: Yes.
MH: I suppose I’m not really making music which is escapist. I mean there are certain kinds of pop music which is really almost a fantasy. Whereas with Aqualung it’s very rooted in something kind of insightful or at least candid about people and relationships and the kind of trials and tribulations of adult life.
RQ: Let’s go back in time for a second. When you were in the band the Forty-Five’s in 2001, you were signed to Mercury Records; you released two singles and then in March 2002 you were dropped by the label and the band split up. At that point when you were dropped by Mercury, what were your thoughts? Were you despairing at the time thinking this will never happen?
MH: It had been ten years of constant effort, you know, leading up to that moment. And we kept, having little almost there moments, you know. And getting the deal with Mercury was another almost there moment. And then it was sort of disappointing to get dropped, obviously. And mostly it was alarming, because I had been slightly relying on them, getting the advance that we were due to pay the rent, you know. And when that wasn’t going to happen all of the sudden it was a bit of a worrisome time. But at the same time I had I just turned thirty and I was starting to wonder if I could really strut about doing kind of power pop much longer. And I’m not sure that my heart was kind of in it anymore.
RQ: Yeah.
MH: I felt maybe I needed, that I wanted to make some music that was that had a kind of richer and broader kind of remit, you know. Where maybe I could indulge my kind of passion for deeper music, for a wider subject matter. So once the band split there was, at least amongst the panic, there was a small sense of relief and maybe an opportunity to do something else.
RQ: So what you are saying is that, for example, with the album Memory Man, this is truly the music that you want to record?
MH: Well it is now, that was the thing. The main thing when I started Aqualung was “well, if I am going to carry on in this awful business of trying to make it as a musician, in some way I just have to be totally true and honest and feel very natural to me.” And even the way that I was singing and stuff in the Forty-Fives didn’t feel natural. I kept losing my voice and it was like I was kind of fighting with myself a bit. So when I started Aqualung, I just thought it’s only going to be allowed in Aqualung if it feels very natural to me. And that’s really been the basic kind of tenant of the whole thing. And even though the music and the sound I’m making with Aqualung has changed over the years, it still it just really feels very natural to me. This is kind of the music that I am supposed to be making.
RQ: So would you say that this music is, is it intentionally, deliberately commercial, or is it just a great thing that happens to sell so well?
MH: It isn’t. There is no kind of ‘calculation’. That was another thing I do was determined not to do when I started Aqualung. In the Forty-Fives we had always been pursuing this dream of the perfect three and half minute pop single and you know. I was tired of all that. I felt like just trying to do something that’s sort of relatively uncompromising in its grown up-ness, I suppose. And I presume that would mean that I would never sell a record. The fact that it’s turned out to be the by far and away the most successful thing that I have done, is just been something like a kind of miracle really. It seems, I always knew there was a risk with my song writing that it might have kind of thought appeal because I just love tunes so much. And it seems like everyone likes a good tune.
RQ: Yes.
MH: You can sometimes sell people quite complex music and ideas, and atmosphere and all the rest, if there is just a way. And music is often that key and that doorway. Yeah, I mean, I will say there has always been a risk that I would be commercially successful, but I always presumed that it wouldn’t happen.
RQ: So was it kind of ironic then that your debut single Strange and Beautiful was picked up by Volkswagen for their TV advert, and then it reached number seven in the UK charts. Was that kind of a delicious irony for you?
MH: Well it was an irony. It was also a kind of a stern lesson to myself really. I mean, knowing that having spent years quite deliberately trying to write commercial rock music and failing to sell anything. The minute that I stopped doing that and started writing in simple terms, kind of from my heart was suddenly the thing that was a big hit was a very valuable lesson. And I thought, okay, I’ve been very fortunate with that. That it kind of made the point without any possible argument that that really is what people look to their musicians and artists to do. To be courageous and honest and to share something of themselves. You know, they don’t really care if it’s got a cracking chorus or not. People respond to music, to the emotion of music I think more than anything else.
RQ: Let me ask you about this new album then, Memory Man. How did you come up with the title?
MH: We always choose the name the album right at the end, it always seems until you finish the book or the painting or whatever, you can’t really say what it should be called. And this record certainly felt like that. I had this strong sense throughout it that it almost felt like a kind of weird soundtrack to a kind of mysterious imaginary science fiction film.
RQ: And the front cover art work kind of reflects that imaginary film?
MH: Yes, so obviously I went to the design people and the photographers with that idea, that we would try and make the artwork be like stills from a lost Kubrick movie. And then after seeing the contacts from that photo shoot which became the sleeve, that I really settled on the title. Because it it had been around as a joke actually Memory Man, because we used this particular effects pedal called a Memory Man such a lot in the record, that we were saying we will have to call it Memory Man because it is like 60 percent made of memory man, you know!
RQ: [laughs]
MH: But actually it just came back to my head because it has that kind of vibe. And it just seemed to sit with the artwork and the feeling of the record and it seems to add to something quite nice so that is why it’s called Memory Man.
RQ: And final question. You grew up in what many people would regard as one of the most exciting and fun environments. Your parents run an independent record shop. What was that like growing up in that environment? It must have exposed you to a lot of music.
MH: Yes, it did. I mean it was exciting because there was just new music all the time. I think what was different about it compared to most people growing up with their parents; it was current music all the time. You know, the hits of the day, it was new music, new records. And even though my mom and dad weren’t like aficionados of the cool new music of the late seventies, they nevertheless had to stock it because they could sell it. So, you know, you would have records by Television or Magnus and Abba as well. You know it was like the whole thing was there. And it must of had an effect on us, you know. It was just around us all the time. But also Dad bought a piano just after I was born and we started singing in the church choir when we were about five. Music was always on and we were always singing in the car together. It was just a family kind of thing that we all agreed on. Maybe the only thing that we all agreed on as a good thing, and I think we loved music. And I think that really set me up on my path to being a musician.
Links:
http://www.aqualung.net
